Barbara Petronio: “The shadows that hide under the snow”

When he was a teenager, Barbara Petronio he spent his afternoons “playing” his favorite films. She took the videotape of masterpieces like Once upon a time in America, he made her go on and, a moment later, she tried to rewrite the scene on a sheet of paper, noting the dialogues she had just heard, as if that dissection could help her capture the essence of filmic perfection, the art behind the stories that she had just heard. we look at the cinema and on television and they are capable of captivating us from the first to the last. With a past like this, Petronius could only have become a screenwritersigning the writing of cult series such as Police District, RIS – Imperfect crimes and, more recently, Suburra And At home everyone is fine – The seriesand of films like Indivisible, which allowed her to win the first David of her career.

You and I both know, though, that not all stories find a producer willing to make them, and that’s why Red snowhis first – beautiful – novel published by HarperCollins, had to abandon the audiovisual to come to life between the paper and virtual pages of kindles. “I felt I wanted to tackle a genre that Italian cinema has abandoned for several years, namely the supernatural thriller that was in our DNA in the 1970s and which we then lost”, says Barbara Petronio on the phone while attending a meeting on Zoom on one of the thousands of projects that she is involved in and of which she obviously cannot tell anything. The idea of ​​the book comes from a very particular atmospheric phenomenon: the sky tinged with red due to siroccal winds laden with Saharan sand that cause the snow to turn from white to red. A frame that will stand out against the background of the story of Giordana and Dario, a couple in crisis who, after the tragic death of their young son, will try to rebuild a life by facing ghosts and hidden truths that will explode in an unpredictable ending of which we cannot anticipate anything so as not to spoil the surprise.

In short, Red snow it risked being a movie or a series.
«I would have liked, but I ran into several ‘no’s. They told me that the Italian public wants to be reassured but, this time, I decided not to stop and to go beyond the path of the audiovisual market. I felt within me the desire to tell such a story, so I tried to measure myself with a channel that was unknown to me thanks to Simone Marchi, who advised me to try it ».

When did you write it?
“Between the two lockdowns. Especially the second. I was lucky because Red snow it had a very smooth editorial path ».

Where did the idea come from?
“Four years ago. I was from the second season of Suburra and, after the criminals of Olbia and Rome, I felt I wanted to tell a different, more intimate story. I read about the red snow phenomenon and thought I’d hook it to a genre I love. Stephen King, to make you understand, is my daily bread, and certainly has, at least in part, influenced the creation ».

Let’s talk a little about this snow that, as well as in Red by John Logan, is the bringer of danger and death, and which she describes as a veil covering something terrible.
“I really liked the contrast between innocence and the whiteness of the snow and the red of the blood, of something more murky. For me, snow represents a weight under which dark and unknown things hide. This allowed me to experience the novel as if it were a journey, allowing me to literally dig into the characters to get to know them better ».

Writing a screenplay is a team effort, while writing a novel is a solitary activity: how did you deal with it?
“It was strange at first, precisely because I’ve always been used to collective brainstorming. I experienced it as a leap into the unknown, since, at this time, I could not compare myself with any reader, unlike what happens when writing a series, which is all a working progress “.